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fifteen

UK/ˈfɪf.tiːn/US/ˈfɪf.tiːn/
nounA1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: fifteens

Fifteen is the number after fourteen. Three fives, and a quarter of sixty.

Because sixty divides so neatly, fifteen minutes became the quarter hour and the natural unit of a timetable. Rugby union has fifteen players a side, which is why the sport is sometimes called fifteens to distinguish it from rugby league's thirteen. Tennis scores in fifteens for reasons nobody has satisfactorily explained, though a clock face is the usual theory.

Definitions of fifteen

  1. 1nounfifteenThe number after fourteen.A1

    “The bus takes about fifteen minutes.”

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *pénkʷe

  2. Middle English

    fiftene

  3. English, today

    fifteen

From Middle English fiftene. From Middle English fiftene, from Old English fīftīene, fīftēne, from Proto-Germanic fimftehun. Cognate with West Frisian fyftjin, Dutch vijftien, German fünfzehn, Danish femten. Equivalent to five + -teen.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

fifteen in the wild

  • Thus, 62 inches is fifteen and a half hands, or 15.2 hh (normally said as "fifteen-two", or occasionally in full as "fifteen hands two inches").

    Hand (unit)

  • In 1897 there were twenty candidates for the fifteen board member positions.

    1897 Liverpool School Board election

  • There were nineteen candidates for the fifteen board member positions.

    1900 Liverpool School Board election

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.